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Vol/53 No/6 2014 DECEMBEr 2014/JAnUArY 2015 The Linguist 9 THRELFORD LECTURE nobody who works at the Court is monolingual; it's not possible. There are very good linguists all over the place. We have 24 official languages, so we have to be able to deal with the outside world in all of them. Asking a national court to send over papers, promised a month ago, has to be done by our registry in courteous slovak, if necessary. Our research and Documentation Division is composed of lawyers working in each of their national systems, who can explain the niceties of, say, Estonian law in the court's internal language, which is French. Thus, throughout the Court, including among the Members of the Court and in their chambers, language is part and parcel of the ordinary daily work. Dealing with fuzzy texts In principle, courts don't originate texts – they construe texts that exist – so the first question is whether the legislation is written in a way that is precise and clear. Due to political compromise, legislation can sometimes be a most unholy mess. Characteristically, this happens when the Member states agree to legislate together in an area that is particularly sensitive. Various national officials are sent to Brussels with contradictory instructions: 'reach an agreement, but don't give away anything that matters'. When they try to hammer out a text around the negotiating table, some rather strange things can happen. some of the definitions go missing, and articles that had quite sharp drafting end up floppy and fuzzy, because that was the only way a text could be agreed. Moreover, although there are (sensible) drafting guidelines, one should not minimise the linguistic challenge of getting any EU legislation conceived, drafted, modified, adopted and translated into all the languages. Let me give you a plausible example. An eager young official is given the job of drafting a Commission proposal for a Council regulation. she is Latvian; she drafts in English, with occasional help from a busy English colleague. The text is then given to her portuguese Head of Unit, who amends it and passes it on to the slovenian colleague who is going to the working group meeting with representatives from all Member states. After heated discussion, the text comes back for further work. At this point, our nice Latvian official is on maternity leave, so a polish colleague, working with a Greek trainee, takes over and tries to implement the suggested changes. The revised text goes back to the slovenian colleague for further meetings. Eventually, a compromise text is agreed, following the political input we discussed earlier. Finally, it will be translated into all the EU languages. now, what is the chance that, at the end of this process, everything is going to be neatly tucked into position, that all the definitions will be consistent , and there will be no loose bits of drafting? I had to deal with a good example of such a problem in Case C-173/07 Emirates Airlines v Dieter schenkel. Dr schenkel had made a travel reservation in Germany for a return journey with Emirates Airlines from Dusseldorf to Manila (via Dubai) and back. On the return journey, the flight was cancelled and he sought €600 compensation. Article 3(a) of regulation no 261/2004 states that the regulation applies 'to passengers departing from an airport located in the territory of a Member state, to which the Treaty applies'. To be eligible for compensation, Dr schenkel had, therefore, to argue that the outward and return flights were non-independent parts of a single flight that began in Dusseldorf. Otherwise – since he was flying with a 'non- Community carrier' (Emirates) – the return flight would have been excluded by the wording of Article 3(b). now, here's the linguistic issue. The English text of Article 3(a) speaks of passengers 'departing from an airport'. The wording in French is passagers au départ d'un aéroport; in spanish pasajeros que partan de un aeropuerto; and there are equivalent formulations in Dutch, Italian and portuguese, those being the languages I had at hand to check. However, the German text is not the same. It talks about flights: Fluggäste, die auf Flughäfen… einen Flug antreten ('passengers who embark on a flight at airports…'). That textual difference enabled Dr schenkel to persuade the Amtsgericht in Frankfurt that it was a single journey – a return flight there and back – and that, since he boarded the outbound flight within the EU, he was covered for the entire trip. The airline appealed to the Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt, which referred it to the CJEU, which arrived at the conclusion that a flight is not the same as a journey. ('The concept of "flight"… must be interpreted as consisting essentially in an air PALACE OF JUSTICE The European Court of Justice golden towers (left); and the Grand Courtroom (above left) IMAGEs: © EUrOpEAn pArLIAMEnT